Advocacy Archive
Testimony on the
FY 2003 Budget of the National Science Foundation
Before the Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs, HUD, and Independent Agencies
Committee on Appropriations
U.S. House of Representatives
The Honorable James T. Walsh, Chair
April 16, 2002
Mr. Chair, Members of the Committee: Thank you for this opportunity to present the views of the American Psychological Society (APS) on the FY 2003 appropriations of the National Science Foundation (NSF). I am Alan Kraut, Executive Director of APS. We are a 15,000-member organization of scientists and academics, most of whom are located in colleges and universities across the country. Many members of the American Psychological Society are supported by the NSF, and much basic research in our field could not exist without NSF funding.
APS strongly supports the Coalition for National Science Funding's recommendation of $5.5 billion for the National Science Foundation in FY 2003. This would be a 14.7 percent increase over FY 02.
Both Congress and the Administration have expressed a high degree of confidence in NSF's mission and its efficient management of resources. As the only government agency to receive a "green light" rating from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for financial management in the President's budget, NSF has proven that this would be an investment that pays off for Congress and America. OMB's praise did not end there- its director, Mitch Daniels, added last November that "The National Science Foundation is one of the true centers of excellence in this government… It has supported eight of the 12 most recent Nobel Prize awards earned by Americans at some point in their careers. … Programs like these...deserve to be singled out, deserve to be fortified and strengthened."
More recently, the House Budget Committee proposed an increase of 11 percent for NSF in the FY03 budget resolution passed on March 13th. Chairman Boehlert's assessment, that "the federal investment in science and technology is absolutely vital to our nation's economic stability and national security," could not be more accurate. However, it should be noted that $76 million of this increase is due to the transfer into NSF of three programs formerly operated run by other agencies.
The increase that you and your colleagues in the Senate provided for NSF in FY 02, and the increase that we are recommending in FY 03, are important steps in offsetting the comparative under-funding that has characterized NSF's budget in the past several years. The scientific community is grateful for your support and it is our hope that you will continue to approve the much-needed expansion of NSF's budget.
Within the NSF budget, we ask the Committee to continue its history of support for behavioral and social science research at NSF. This Committee was instrumental in encouraging NSF to establish its Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) Directorate a decade ago, and over the years has encouraged many of the initiatives coming out of that directorate. The FY03 budget request to Congress contains a 15.9 percent increase for SBE as a whole, and an 11.6 percent increase in the Behavioral and Cognitive Science program.
These increases reflect the high regard in which NSF holds these fields. For the first time at NSF, the budget calls for funding of a Foundation-wide priority area in the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, which will explore the complex interactions between society and technology. NSF's budget recommendation calls for $10 million in "seed money," with this goal in mind: for our society to take greater advantage of the technology available to it, and to prepare for further advances. There will be an emphasis on studies of decision-making, cognition, and learning. The money is there, and the time is now.
Before addressing specific activities of the SBE directorate, I first want to provide a brief overview of basic psychological research, to give you an idea of the scope and breadth of the field that I represent.
An Overview of Basic Psychological Research: Programs and initiatives that involve psychological science are our best chance to solve the enigma that has perplexed us for so long: How does the human mind work and develop? APS members include thousands of scientists who conduct basic research in areas such as learning, cognition, and memory, and the linked mechanisms of how we process information through visual and auditory perception. Others study decision-making and judgment; mathematical reasoning; language development; the developmental origins of behavior; and the impact of individual, environmental and social factors in behavior. The basic psychological research conducted by APS members has implications for a wide range of applications, including designing technology that incorporates the perceptual and cognitive functioning of humans; teaching math to children; improving learning through the use of technology; developing more effective hearing aids and speech recognition machines; increasing workforce productivity; and ameliorating social problems such as prejudice or violence. While this is a diverse range of topics, all of these areas of research are bound together by a simple notion: that understanding the human mind, brain, and behavior is crucial to maximizing human potential. That places these pursuits squarely at the forefront of several of the most pressing issues facing the Nation, this Congress, and the Administration.
Progress and investments in psychological science will not simply lead us to a better understanding of how humans think, decide, evaluate, and adapt. It will lead us to revolutionary advances in our powers to predict, detect, and prevent. In this time of uncertainty, where we can come to rely so heavily on technology to keep us safe and confident, we must turn to cognition in order to maximize this technology. An understanding of how people process information will enable us to design technology and computers that fit our needs and make us comfortable when using them. The potential for advances would be limitless.
Turning now to the SBE Directorate, I'd like to highlight some of its programs, specifically those in cognitive neuroscience, and those in child development. These initiatives exemplify SBE's essential leadership on the cutting-edge frontiers of research, and they illustrate the important work that will only flourish if funded to the levels that they deserve.
NSF's Cognitive Neuroscience Initiative. Basic behavioral science supported by SBE traditionally has included research in cognition, perception, language, development, emotion/affect, and social psychology. These have been funded primarily through its Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences. Theoretical work in behavioral science has greatly advanced our understanding of the basic mechanisms underlying memory, emotion, learning, and other psychological and cognitive processes. Recognizing the potential contributions of neuroscience to these and related areas, the directorate has added funds to these programs for the express purpose of bringing more neuroscience perspectives to bear on these topics - to map these psychological mechanisms onto the physical dimensions of the brain.
NSF, with the right support, will have the ability to link advances in human thought and behavior to the natural and social sciences. Now, with brain imaging and other non-invasive techniques, we are poised to confirm and extend these theories through studies of the living brain. Scientists from a range of areas will be able to test theories about normal brain functioning; assess the behavioral consequences of brain damage; and reach new levels of understanding of how the brain develops and matures, in terms of both structure and function. NSF is currently seeking highly innovative, interdisciplinary proposals aimed at advancing the understanding of how the brain supports thought, perception, action, social process, and other aspects of behavior.
One final point on this topic: Investment in new technologies is no longer the sole domain of the physical sciences. A stable, long-term commitment to the study and development of new technology ensures continued advances in all fields, including our own discipline of psychological science, which is part of the broader behavioral and social science research enterprise. Emerging fields, such as behavioral genetics and cognitive neuroscience -- which employ the latest in imaging and computing technology to unlock the mysteries of the mind and the origins of behavior -- are examples of where gains in technology are necessary if we are to see a return on our investment in science. In addition, addressing human factors in the design of technology is essential; advances in technology would be severely undermined unless we incorporate what we know about perception, learning and memory, and other behavior-based processes that people draw on in using technology. Advances in science and technology will not only make the U.S. a world leader in many arenas, but will also contribute to better homeland security and a stronger economy.
NSF's Children's Research Initiative: Recognizing that a combination of perspectives -- cognitive, psychological, social, and neural -- is needed to fully understand how children develop and how they acquire and use knowledge and skills, the SBE directorate will support new interdisciplinary research centers that will focus primarily on integrating traditionally disparate research disciplines concerned with child development. Known as the Children's Research Initiative (CRI), this program will bring together such areas as cognitive development, cognitive science, developmental psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, anthropology, social psychology, sociology, family studies, cross-cultural research, and environmental psychology, to name only some of the relevant disciplines. Basic researchers from these areas will focus on problems that cannot be solved through single investigator studies. This initiative aims to enhance the content knowledge of the fields involved; build an intellectual infrastructure within and among disciplines; and build a program of research in relevant aspects of developmental, learning, and human sciences.
One of the CRI's four research centers is the one led by principal investigator and psychology researcher Stephen J. Ceci, of Cornell University. The Cornell Institute for Research on Children will conduct rigorous multi-disciplinary research on issues of significance to children and their families. Specifically, the center will commission national teams of the nation's most distinguished developmental scientists to study policy relevant questions, and to create a consensus position for dissemination to the public. Ultimately, this project will place science-based information in the hands of Congress and other policymakers.
The two initiatives I just described are in the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Science. SBE's other main component, the Division of Social and Economic Sciences, also supports a substantial amount of basic psychological science. Examples of research topics being addressed in that division include: human dimensions of global change, group and individual decision making, risk management, and human factors. Research in these areas has the potential to increase employee and organizational productivity, improve decision making in critical military or civilian emergency situations, and inform the public policymaking processes across a range of areas.
The Science of Learning: How people think, learn and remember is a core area of interest at NSF. Known as the science of learning, this field draws from a variety of research topics across psychology, such as brain and behavior, learning, memory, perception, social psychology, and development. The basic challenge for both the science and education communities is this: How can we apply and extend our knowledge of how people think, learn and remember to improve education?
NSF's program has two broad goals: improving our understanding of the learning process, and then transferring that understanding into application. We have the knowledge base and a critical mass of top-flight scientists to help solve the educational and learning issues that have been identified by the government as high priorities. But getting that knowledge into the classroom is going to require a multi-disciplinary, multi-agency effort. This will be facilitated via investigations in human-computer interactions, cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and other activity related to child learning and cognitive development. Through the establishment of three or four multi-disciplinary Science of Learning Centers, NSF will for the first time attempt to focus the full range of science and research onto a scientific workforce objective. These centers will also provide a research base for the President's Math and Science Partnership.
I'm pleased to report to the Committee that two recent editions of the APS journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest (PSPI) are excellent examples of how psychological science can be used to enhance the education of our children. One of three scientific journals we publish, PSPI presents reports modeled after those generated by the National Academy of Sciences. Developed by panels of distinguished scientists, our reports focus on issues where psychological science can contribute to our understanding of topics of national importance, such as education and education research.
The May 2001 issue of PSPI, entitled "Does Class Size Matter," describes what we know about the effects of class size on children's learning. Of all the ideas for improving education, few are as simple or attractive as reducing the number of pupils per teacher. With its uncomplicated appeal, class-size reduction has lately gone from being a subject of primarily academic interest to a policy juggernaut. In the US, more than 20 states and the federal government have adopted policies aimed at decreasing class sizes, and billions of dollars have been spent or committed in the past few years. But those policies are based on anecdotal assumptions. The research summarized in this report indicates that class size alone is not the only determinant of effective learning.
Similarly, in the November 2001 issue of PSPI, "How Psychological Science Informs the Teaching of Reading," the authors examine research, theory, and practice relevant to how children learn to read English, summarizing research from developmental psychology on children's language competency when they enter school and on the nature of early reading development. Two inescapable conclusions emerged: (a) Mastering the alphabetic principle (Phonics) is essential to becoming proficient in the skill of reading, and (b) methods that teach this principle are more effective than those that do not. Using whole-language activities to supplement phonics for instruction does help to make reading fun and meaningful for children, but ultimately, phonics instruction is critically important because it helps beginning readers understand the alphabetic principle and learn new words. Thus, elementary-school teachers who make the alphabetic principle explicit are most effective in helping their students become skilled, independent readers. I'm pleased to provide copies of these reports to the Committee. In addition, they are available online at our website: www.psychologicalscience.org/newsresearch/publications/journals. You should also know that NSF has supported the development and dissemination of PSPI.
These are just two examples among a range of others that illustrate how important the science of learning is when it comes to getting the most out of education. We ask this Committee to monitor and support NSF's efforts to bring the science of learning to bear on the nation's educational needs. Congress has demonstrated that it understands the importance of education research by introducing such legislation as HR 3801, which will provide for education research, and HR 3130, the Technology Talent Bill. The expanded budget we recommend for FY 03 will allow NSF to capitalize on the growing momentum surrounding this issue both at NSF and in the field. Last year, Congress passed the historic ESEA, promising to leave no child behind. Using the science of learning and education research to develop education will make sure that none are.
In closing, I want to note that building and sustaining the capacity for innovation and discovery in the behavioral and social sciences is a core goal of the National Science Foundation. We ask that you encourage NSF's efforts in these areas, not just those activities I've described here, but the full range of activities supported by the SBE directorate and by NSF at large. Your support in FY 2003 will help NSF lay the groundwork for this long-overdue emphasis on these sciences.
Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before you to present our recommendations. I would be pleased to answer questions or provide additional information.